The Rock Look!

The Rock Star: simplified transformations.
Before Elvis there were no real rock stars. There was more talent and there were other famous musicians but he became the icon, the brightest of them all. He did his hair like a trucker, wore jeans like an inmate at the state penitentiary and it seemed original before ift became the rock-a-billy uniform even to this day. Later he wore big blazers and then jumpsuits but that’s also the rise and fall of the genre.
After Elvis the pop model changed though he remained; the sixties started with suits as a respectable turn but ended with psychedelic gypsies scaring the hell out your parents.



Let’s be clear, would you like it if your daughter brought home some dude who looked like Jimi Hendrix and you didn’t know who Jimi Hendrix was? There were plenty of other hippies stinking up the world with their look that successfully alienated everyone over 30; would you let Janis Joplin use your shower? Would you let Gerry Garcia drop a deuce in the bano? It's a look that still annoys everybody, dirty and stoned.


After that look things toned down a bit until David Bowie and glam got hot for a bit introducing make up and six inch heeled boots for men. This was taken to the extreme ridiculousness with KISS and lord knows it was very successful for them. Hell they had dolls made out of their images! Ten inch person, four inch tongue! Who knew that music turned into a walking talking cartoon would do so well?


So where do you go from larger than life 70s wackiness? You go to bigger hair and start applying makeup like your girlfriend does and you become Mötley Crüe which explodes into Poison which in some ways was just borrowing from the New Wave movement a few years prior. This particular look was huge; there hundreds of these bands with their sort of androgynous look and hair to heaven.





It’s a troubling sign when your rock stars look like trannies so it was refreshing to get the anti-rock star with the implementation grunge which featured Dr. Martins, Chuck Tailors, cargo shorts and whatever you found at a thrift store. Not glamorous at all which made some wonder if that zonked kid next door was really a successful musician. You can make the argument that the Grunge look was really just the Punk look with a flannel shirt thrown on top and maybe you're right grunge was so much about giving the finger to white guys in suits as it was giving the finger to white guys in hair spray. Punk was about living in garbage and Grunge was about living with junk.




In the Hip hop world everything was going low key as well, MC Hammer was no longer as awesome as Dr. Dre who looked like any guy who didn't want to be messed with.
Besides Marilyn Manson’s Dope Show or My Chemical Romance’s "Black Parade" Gothic Bowie make out session the look of rock has remained humble even if the performer is not. So are jeans and T-shirts prevailing with variable cuts and bad hairstyles? No likely, something else will come around whether it’s a Devo copy, another run at suit and ties or something I can’t even imagine the Rock Star will transform and personally I like it when it’s over the top.



Granted there are a lot of sub movements like the New Romantics which Prince made his own and then spawned a million little copy cats.
I'm intentionally leaving out pop acts because folks like Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Madonna need image to perpetuate their musical fame to a point where the look is more important than the sound.